


Fulfilling Prophecy

by regenderate



Series: Can't Believe It's Not Canon [11]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:12:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regenderate/pseuds/regenderate
Summary: Dawn is on the verge of telling Cassie how she really feels-- it’s now or never, after all-- but then some ass fake-asks her to the dance and the girl she really wants to go with slips away, right through her fingers, and something inside Dawn’s chest deflates, sinking down into her soul.--Dawn has a crush on Cassie Newton. She doesn't really feel the need to do anything about it... until she finds out the bad news. Buffyverse Femslash Week 2018 Day 5: Minor Characters





	Fulfilling Prophecy

**Author's Note:**

> this is a bit sadder than my usual fare. if it helps, i'm working on a multichapter jenny/olivia thing in the same universe as the one i posted yesterday, and that is going to be Very Happy

Cassie Newton is pretty, Dawn thinks.

She’s got a nice purple streak in her hair, and she’s always wearing the coolest T shirts, and she writes poetry and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks about her.

Dawn hasn’t really gotten the chance to talk to her since the school year started, but she likes to look. And then she likes to look away, afraid that she’s hurting Cassie somehow.

And then she remembers that Tara told her it was okay to look at women, so she looks back, and Cassie is somehow even prettier than she was a moment before.

Dawn is okay leaving this as an unrequited crush, mostly. She’s pretty sure Cassie has a thing for her best friend, and Dawn’s been there, she gets it. (One time she suggested to Janice that they kiss, you know, for practice, and Janice asked her if she was some kind of lesbo or something. At the time, Dawn just shook her head, but now she isn’t so sure.)

But Cassie is just  _ so  _ pretty.

When Buffy shows up at Dawn’s locker and asks if Dawn knows a Cassie Newton, Dawn looks up immediately.

“She’s in a few of my classes,” she says, as casually as possible. “Why?”

“I’m worried about her,” Buffy says, and Dawn is immediately worried too, the sensation twisting in her chest. 

This finally gives her an excuse to talk to Cassie, though. She wishes it were under better circumstances. But Cassie seems pretty much okay, and Dawn’s heart lifts when Cassie says she won’t go to the dance with Mike-- and then it crashes down again when she realizes that it’s because Cassie thinks she’s going to die. Dawn  _ really  _ doesn’t want Cassie to die.

Dawn’s always been good with research, but this time, she really throws herself into it. She looks up precognition, she looks up ESP, she looks up ceremonies with coins, and she looks up Cassie Newton. 

Of course, she does this alone, after everyone else has gone to look for Cassie’s dad; while they’re researching, she just tries to throw in a few helpful suggestions. She doesn’t really think Mike is the perpetrator, but it’s not like there are any other obvious suspects. And it’s possible that she’s trying to divert some attention away from her totally obvious crush.

Anyway, she finds a lot of really interesting stuff, but nothing that’s actually going to help her save Cassie. She has a sinking feeling that maybe, if Cassie knows she’s going to die, there’s nothing Dawn can actually do to prevent it. She’s read ancient myths about prophecies that come true no matter what you do to prevent them; she has a stark memory of reading  _ Oedipus Rex _ as a kid and being shocked at how cruel the fates could be.

She doesn’t want to end up wandering the world blind, and she doesn’t want Cassie to end up that way either. 

So, the next day, while Buffy works on prevention, Dawn tries to figure out how best to help Cassie have a good last day. It doesn’t help that she really  _ doesn’t _ know Cassie all that well, no matter how much poetry she reads; she can’t just give Cassie a bunch of balloons or decorate her locker or anything like that. Especially when Cassie is trying to fly under the radar with the whole death thing.

Instead, Dawn goes through her day in a daze, contemplating mortality and death and what happens next. What happens when a girl dies who you had really been hoping you could look at for a little while longer? 

She finally gets her conversation in after school, and Cassie smiles and is sad and calls Dawn out on just helping because of Buffy, which, maybe Dawn is helping because of Buffy, but that’s only because she’d never have had the courage to help on her own.

Dawn is on the verge of telling Cassie how she really feels-- it’s now or never, after all-- but then some ass fake-asks her to the dance and the girl she really wants to go with slips away, right through her fingers, and something inside Dawn’s chest deflates, sinking down into her soul.

It isn’t even that she has this huge attachment to Cassie, because Dawn is fully aware that they barely know each other. It’s just that Cassie is so very pretty, and clearly has so much to say, and the fact that she’s going to die before she gets the chance to say everything she wants to say and before Dawn gets to see what she looks like when she’s twenty, or thirty, or forty is just such a tragic occurrence. Dawn doesn’t quite have words for what she’s feeling, but she knows that she just really wants Cassie to stay alive, and she knows that Cassie’s going to die no matter how much Dawn wishes.

But she can’t do anything about it, so she goes home, and she knows Buffy is doing her absolute best by Cassie, just like she always does. Dawn gets on her sister a lot, but she knows Buffy tries, and she knows that every person Buffy doesn’t save sticks around in Buffy’s mind. She’s heard Buffy talk about Kendra, who Dawn never even met, and who died years ago but still comes up, and she’s heard about Ford, who Dawn always thought was kind of silly and who was dying of brain cancer anyway, and who actively tried to kill Buffy and her friends, but who Buffy still thinks about every time she sees a cheesy vampire movie. Dawn knows that Buffy will fight for Cassie, and when that doesn’t work, she’ll remember Cassie forever, but that’s not enough. Dawn wants Cassie to survive.

But it has to be enough, because  _ Cassie won’t survive. _ And she doesn’t survive. Buffy comes home, defeated, just like Dawn knew she would, and she says that she saved Cassie, but she couldn’t save her from her own heart.

Hearing the news hits Dawn in the chest one more time. It’s not  _ fair _ , she thinks. Cassie had so much to offer. 

But if Dawn’s learned anything in these last few years of having a Slayer for a sister, it’s that life really isn’t fair, and sometimes the people with the most to offer are the first to die. 

It’s just that none of those people have been people Dawn cares about before. 

She goes up to her room and tries to cry, but she can’t do it, somehow. She imagines Cassie looking at her with that sad and resigned look on her face, saying, “Don’t cry for me, okay? I’ll be happy, wherever I am.” She thinks about Cassie’s poetry, how Cassie knew what was coming and prepared herself for it, and she feels something settle in her chest, somehow. She doesn’t have to cry.

She does go to Cassie’s funeral, which is far too bleak for a girl who had purple streaks in her hair and liked to make collages for her poems. A priest speaks as they lower Cassie’s casket into the ground, and Dawn wishes they had just had a poetry reading, maybe, where they had read Cassie’s poems and celebrated her life.

Most of all, though, Dawn wishes Cassie’s life were still going on, so that then Dawn could get to know her properly, and maybe ask her to the school dance.

 


End file.
